Veering to the East and (very) slightly off course

One of my shutdown losses that  can't resume for a while is the weekly "ESL Lesson."  It was the brainchild of my wonderful Hong Kong-born friend Anita.  She and her husband Stephen have been lovely neighbours from our first days in The Yellow House, with Anita's knock on the door and occasional deliveries of Stephen's baked goods. 

It didn't take me long to recognize that he was not just a guy who likes to bake but is an accomplished and inventive professional baker.  They were charmed that I recognized this and that I eventually dubbed them "The Royal Bakery".  If Queen Elizabeth ever came (again) to Vancouver, Stephen would have to do the catering, I proclaimed, and to confirm their status I presented them with a Royal Warrant.   

Researching the symbols for the Royal Warrant, I learned that the Dragon and Phoenix together (the two figures at the top) are a symbol of marital felicity.   Perfect!!!  Meanwhile, realizing my interest in learning about Chinese culture, Anita came to suggest that I might help teach English to a friend of hers, fairly recently arrived from mainland China.  Well -- these two women are both so smart and already so accomplished that our weekly "classes" turned into the Three Ladies' Nights (-Anita) -- laugh-fests fueled from the outset by a group enthusiasm for pandas.  We can still have neighbourly sidewalk chats, but the focussed indoor sessions are in abeyance.   

And this has been a long non-explanation for why Stephen came to mind as I thought about a Virgo male portrait for the next customer at The Zodiac Cafe.

Manly P. Hall lists Virgo characteristics as:

"Forehead full; shoulders broad; nostrils wide; eyes frank; mouth small; lips full."

Well...some of that would work, some of it wouldn't.  But why let that stop me when I became totally carried away and decided to try the couple together, with Anita kinda sorta maybe fitting Libra's characteristics?

"Head long; features small and regular; teeth good; nose Grecian; mouth and chin well-formed; hair fine."

There were big reasons not even to attempt this:-- Cultural mal-alignment, for a start.  The Chinese Zodiac, after all, has nothing to do with the western Zodiacal belt. Also, I'd never even attempted a drawing with the characteristic Asian eyelids and am so used to looking at my own increasingly droopy eyelids in the mirror.  And, regardless of anything else, it's well known that smiles are tricky to draw and paint -- and these friends have two of the best smiles in the world.

So what?  Let's get started.  Here are some preliminaries:

It was downright challenging just getting them on the same canvas.  I went broader/narrower about three times with each of their smiles and shorter/longer about three times with each of their faces.  Here's an early stage:--

And for better or for worse, the grand finale:  "Dragon and Phoenix, Virgo and Libra"  (copyright 2020).

Now, to reassure my readers who might be concerned with what I'd do with a photo I might have of them...... never fear.  I guarantee that I won't be pursuing  this direction -- of trying to make a realistic and fairly conservative portrait of someone I know.  And while there is so much room for improvement in this work, I decided to tell the subjects I'd done another "Dragon and Phoenix" and if they wanted it, they could have it.  Of course, they said yes -- and when they saw it, Anita burst into tears and Stephen said, "Oh, she is always so young and pretty."  A magic moment.

In other neighbourhood magic, another congenial twosome a couple blocks away is in full summertime mode.  Cheers and keep cool!

Always larger than life

 

Although the gathering takes place on-line, The Zodiac Cafe  has truly become a powerhouse with the arrival of Leo, the king of beasts.  Here are the typical Leo characteristics, as described by Manly P. Hall from his esoteric sources:

"Face broad and somewhat flat, hair wavy and usually light, inclined to frontal baldness; mouth firm; eyes commanding; shoulders broad; body well-formed."

My paintings in this series have been alternating male and female subjects.  With a female Leo in mind, I decided to give the wavy hair more prominence than the frontal baldness.  I leafed through my life drawing sketches and thought I'd found a promising subject -- so I invited her to an audition at the Cardboard Club.

Alas!  Another false start.  But that Leo head of hair reminded me of a vintage photo I'd saved from some art link or another.  How's this for a mighty Leo gal?

Do be sure and read about this woman -- Alma deBretteville Spreckels.  Some of her claims to fame:--  Six feet tall; art student-nude model; possible originator of the term "sugar daddy" applied to her wealthy husband, 24 years her senior, who eventually made her a well-regarded socialite-philanthropist in early 20^th century San Francisco.

I was longing to try out my new birthday sketchbook -- with its silvery-charcoal cover, dove-grey pages, and red ribbon place marker -- so I gave "Big Alma" a try:

Oh, no.... as I scrawled at the bottom of the page:--

All right.  Let's try again -- she, too, deserved a Cardboard Club audition.

Yikes!  This one looked uncomfortably like Melania Trump.

The  choice was clear:  Abandon ship or full steam ahead.  Leos are not quitters, and in that spirit, I proceeded directly to my canvas and whipped off this underlayer.  ("Whipped off" as in ....worked for about 5 hours)

  

 And here's the final version, "Zodiac Cafe - Leo" (copyright 2020).

  

Are you longing to know how Leo appeared in my "Astrological Plants" series of a decade ago?  Not surprisingly, the types of plants assigned to Leo are radiant sun-like discs -- since the Sun can be loosely described as Leo's "planet."  Think sunflowers.  Think dandelions.

Hmmm.  I'd never stopped to wonder where that Dandy Lion name originated and here's what I found:

 "Late Middle English: from French dent-de-lion, translation of medieval Latin dens leonis 'lion's tooth' (because of the jagged shape of the leaves)."

But for my Astro Plants painting, I chose not the dandelion but another wild plant that's often mistaken for it -- Hypochaeris radicata  -- commonly known as "Hairy Cat's Paw" !!